as long as we pretend
by talk of michelangelo
Summary: she decides three is her favourite number. kind of sort of AU


It's half-way through one of the million hallways in Hogwarts that she finds Draco Malfoy loitering about. She stops, straightens out her skirt, then her robe, and smiles as she passes him. He scowls and pretends that he has something better to do than wander hallways in the evening while everyone else is at dinner. He doesn't really have to. Not with her.

Because for some stupid reason, she gets it, and she never says anything about it, so neither does he. They walk around the hallways as if they're important, and God knows they'll never be.

When everyone else is busy eating in that room, lit up with thousands of lights and filled with food and laughter and momentary contentment, Luna Lovegood and Draco Malfoy wander because they have nothing else to do.

* * *

They always pass each other by in the hallways. It's usually eight o'clock in the evening, sometimes ten to, but they never miss each other. She has an entire head of white-blonde hair, so eerily similar to his, that they'd be damned if they couldn't see each other.

"How are you?" She says cheerfully in that stupid whimsical voice, as if even though she's the one who wants to talk, she isn't paying any attention anyways. Off day-dreaming like she always does, about nargals or something like that. He doesn't particularly care.

He doesn't answer. He never does. She can count, on one hand, the number of times he's bothered speaking to her.

One: When she was busy putting up notices on a bulletin about her missing shoes (she sort of liked those shoes, but she won't be heartbroken if she can't find them), and he and his cronies were passing by, and some boy or other made a snide comment and he jeered as well and then as they passed, he smirked and said something crude, but she can't quite remember what it is because even then she didn't really pay attention, but she was sort of actually paying attention to the curve of his mouth and the corners of his lips, and she put on a faint, faint smile and gathered her notices and left in the opposite direction.

Two: When they were in Charms and he sat beside her because he came in late, having been caught up with some girl in the broom closet (messy hair and all), and there were no seats left but beside her. She was looking at the window and said, _It's very blue out today_, and he only sneered and told her the weather looked like shit, for lack of a better word. She'd raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

Three: There is no third, she realizes.

* * *

Draco likes to think he's a fierce, independent handsome young man. Most of the girls in Slytherin back up this thought. That mudblood Granger girl thinks he's a bastard, and he's strangely okay with that. In fact, he rather likes the way he is addressed. _Bastard._ It makes him feel dangerous and he likes that feeling.

He likes it until that _mark_ is burned onto his skin, until he can no longer roll his sleeves up during class hours, until he loses so much weight he looks gaunt, until he cries in the bathroom because he's really just a boy who is growing up too fast. He likes it until he is actually considered dangerous.

He likes it until he realizes that kooky girl with the blonde hair, Luna? Luna- until he realizes that if he ever had to fight, Luna would take Potter's side any day because that's how it works, that's how it is. He doesn't _love _her or even _like_ her, but she's unconditionally friendly with him and nobody ever is, and he'd miss it.

* * *

As he wanders he comes across a bright blonde head in the dimly-lit hallways, standing in front of a bulletin board. She has a stack of little sticky-notes and there are a few posted on the board itself.

One says, _today is a good day_.

Another says, _i would like my shoes back._

A third one says, _llgkas mannj!_

They're unbelievably stupid and simple and most of them are actually gibberish, but he's intrigued. He leans against the wall opposite to the bulletin board and watches as she ducks her head to write something, and then peels the note off of its pile and sticks it into a corner of space. Her writing is neat and round. She posts some of the stick notes upside-down by accident. Her wand is tucked behind her ear, and it falls out when she gets on her tip-toes to fill in an empty space near the top of the board.

He picks it up and she turns around and smiles easily at him.

"Can I please have my wand?"

He gives it to her without a word, and watches as she puts one last sticky-note up.

It says, _everything is okay as long as we pretend it is_.

It's his favourite, because today is not a good day, he doesn't care if she gets her shoes back, gibberish is overrated, nargles don't exist, thestrals scare him to death, and _this _is _true_. He doesn't think she's as crazy as she lets on.

* * *

He begins putting on weight again, filling out jutting bones and emphasized rib cages. He begins looking handsome again. Luna notices it. She watches people in her spare time, but she isn't afraid to admit that she watches Draco the most. He's always been handsome (maybe a little angular, a little pointy, but nonetheless handsome) but he is so absolutely _sad_ and it interests her.

It's dinner-time and for once he isn't there.

She finds her shoes tucked in a corner, tied to a door-stop.

She unties the blue laces and pulls them onto her feet, and she wiggles her toes in the limited space and smiles a little. Finding her shoes sort of makes up for Draco not being there.

* * *

He goes back to hallway-wandering when some kid he's never bothered getting to know cracks a stupid joke that goes along the lines of, _My name isn't Luna, but I sure can fucking Lovegood_. The kid waggles his eyebrows at Pansy Parkinson, who makes a muted noise of disgust- how dare he use another girl's name to hit on her! Crabbe and Goyle find it hilarious. Draco is sure he would, too, if he didn't have some strange attachment to the actual name-bearer.

It hits him that he misses her so he goes back to the hallways as if he never left.

She doesn't even act surprised that he's come back, just smiles and asks, "How are you?"

And for the first time he replies.

"Fuck off."

She laughs and he thinks it's the best sound he's heard since the school year started. He even sort of respects her for not taking his crude words to heart. Granger, uptight prude she is (a hot uptight prude, but an uptight prude nonetheless), would probably sputter on a bit about how utterly rude it is to speak like that to someone who's just being friendly to you, you charity-case bastard, and Pansy would stop talking to him for days, but Luna goes on like everything is okay.

It is as long as they keep pretending.

* * *

(She can now officially say he's talked to her three times and she decides three is her favourite number.)

* * *

;) i'm on a roll.  
been a while since i read hp at all, so if anything doesn't sound right it's because i can't remember what it's actually supposed to be/ i'm just stupid :c

**080910**


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